Day 1 iPad Training August 24, 2016

Welcome 2016 iPad Pilot Tech Integrators!

It's an exciting year in SDOL! Our 6th & 8th grade STEM and ESL teachers have been challenged to incorporate technology into their classrooms in new and innovative ways this year. Every teacher will have iPads for students to start creating new learning environments! We are striving to demonstrate great success so we can continue growing this work to all students in our district. Together we can!

There was a lot of excitement (and a few nerves) on our first day of iPad training. Every one of us who is part of this pilot has different experiences with Apple products. It was good our Apple trainers started us all out with the basics. We walked away from that first day with SO MUCH INFORMATION but also so much enthusiasm about making this work meaningful for our students. Our vision for technology in the School District of Lancaster is ENGAGING and DEVELOPING CREATIVE DIGITAL LEARNERS. This means teachers and administrators too! We all need to embrace the knowledge that we CAN engage in the hard work of technology integration, even if there are barriers and struggles. We will be working this year to remove those barriers and create a clear path for the future. Our pilot teachers are off to a great start!! They're going to do amazing work this year!

September Tech Integrators Meeting

Focus: Creating Visual Learning

This month our tech integrators worked on deepening their skills with Keynote and iMovie. One of the most engaging possibilities of using the ipad for instruction is that it provides teachers and students with a million ways to CREATE. Our teachers worked together to on this month's Innovator Challenge: learn how to add pictures, video, audio, and text to create engaging, visual work to share with their students! Can't wait to see their creations next month!

October Tech Integrators Meeting

Focus: ISTE Standard #1 - I AM AN EMPOWERED LEARNER

What is an empowered learner? What does it look like to allow students greater ownership over their learning? This month we unpacked these questions while sharing the creative work we had done during the month. Our pilot integrators crafted beautiful, thoughtful Keynote and iMovie presentations for their colleagues. We reflected on how we could use visual learning to empower our students to reach beyond just rote memorization of facts to synthesizing their knowledge and experience of learning by using technology to create.

We're also very excited to announce that nearly all of our pilot staff has been certified as #AppleTeachers. We're very proud of the above and beyond work they have been doing to prepare themselves and their classrooms. I'm beyond excited to see how they take their own experiences as learners new to technology into their classrooms to transform the learning of their students. We're truly beginning to see what engaged and empowered learners look, sound, and act like!

November Tech Integrators Meeting

Focus: ISTE Standard #2 - I AM A DIGITAL CITIZEN

The student iPads are nearly ready! In preparation, we worked this month to ensure that we're setting up our learning environments to support student learning. Just like helping students develop productive routines at the beginning of the year, we're pausing to take the time to help our learners become digital citizens. For many teachers, this is the first time they will have technology devices in their classrooms on a regular basis. In many of our middle schools, teachers have not had routine access to technology (some only every 14 days!) so we started from scratch setting up iPad learner expectations, discussed classroom organization, and began unpacking how we will use our new Learning Management System (LMS) Schoology as one tool we will utilize to transform our classrooms into digital learning environments! IPads will be showing up in classrooms starting around Thanksgiving! We can't wait!